Smogon Shoddy Server Statistics - March 2009

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Traffic continued to grow on the Smogon Shoddy Battle Server in March. I'm not sure if it has anything to do with the US release of Platinum, or if this is just a continuation of a steadily increasing trend. March had roughly 40,000 more battles than February, and 20,000 more battles than January. Server traffic has been growing fairly steadily since the server opened in July of 2008.

All the traffic is nice, but it certainly gives me additional headaches when collecting stats. I can continue to use my current programs for a while, but if this trend continues, I may need to rewrite some of them. I also may need to rethink the way I store some of the data. For now, everything is still OK. But all these battles make it very difficult to collect deeper information and statistics.

These stats were gathered from 345,124 individual battles that were fought during the month of March on the Smogon Shoddy Battle Server. Usage and Leads are listed in the posts directly below this one.

These are awesome, great job Doug!
I was honestly surprised to see Infernape in among the top leads, but everything else looks just about right. The steels really are dominating the metagame at this point, thankfully there are so few of them!

edit: Though it pains me that Infernape also displays the "noob" patter, though not to the same gross degree as Electivire. It really is a good pokemon after all. It's just not Heatran, that's all (and I guess noobs think it's better than it is).

You can't use the "serve as a check" reasoning really. "Lugia would make an excellent Salamence/Scizor/Heatran (/gyarados/infernape/metagross . . .) check! let's bring it down~!"

edit: Why the hell do we have to target all the sweepers? If you take Gallade, Starapter and Raikou out, of course Shaymin and Missy use will rise. :/ If you keep going at that rate UU will be an even worse circle-jerk of stall and set up than old UU was.

It looks as if reachzero has made his point clear and it has caught on. Manaphy has nearly 50% usage :] Thanks reach for making the very awesome thread on proper ways for testing. Also I hope this helps in everybody's choice making for it's tiering status.

edit: Why the hell do we have to target all the sweepers? If you take Gallade, Starapter and Raikou out, of course Shaymin and Missy use will rise. :/ If you keep going at that rate UU will be an even worse circle-jerk of stall and set up than old UU was.

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I didn't mean ME specifically, but many people are now going to cry for the removal of Shaymin and/or Mismagius. I agree with you completely though.

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It looks as if reachzero has made his point clear and it has caught on. Manaphy has nearly 50% usage :] Thanks reach for making the very awesome thread on proper ways for testing. Also I hope this helps in everybody's choice making for it's tiering status.

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Even before Reach made that thread, Useage of suspects was around 50%.

You can't use the "serve as a check" reasoning really. "Lugia would make an excellent Salamence/Scizor/Heatran (/gyarados/infernape/metagross . . .) check! let's bring it down~!"

edit: Why the hell do we have to target all the sweepers? If you take Gallade, Starapter and Raikou out, of course Shaymin and Missy use will rise. :/ If you keep going at that rate UU will be an even worse circle-jerk of stall and set up than old UU was.

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Considering that Crobat barely got banned in the first place, I think an argument showing it would be good for the metagame is relevant. It checks the top 3, but unlike Lugia, it does not check the remaining 47 (probably a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the idea).

I remember, two months ago, when people were saying Latias would end Infernape's usage. Now it's in the top 5. Go figure.

Poor Yanmega at 52, Donphan somehow hanging at 50 again, and look at Smeargle up into the top 50!

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There are just enough checks to Latias, that checks other things as well. Or just too many good Latias checks, so Infernape didn't dwindle from Latias being OU. Infernape is just too good as a lead or wallbreaker anyways.

Also.. for relievement. YES SMEARGLE TOP 50! Been waiting to say something like that.

edit: Though it pains me that Infernape also displays the "noob" patter, though not to the same gross degree as Electivire. It really is a good pokemon after all. It's just not Heatran, that's all (and I guess noobs think it's better than it is).

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That usage number is incredible. I thought it would end up around the mid-late 40's. Yes, Electivire has that "decent, but gives nothing much in return."

Seriously guys do we have to keep bringing up Electivire every month? People just end up rehashing the same points over and over. We all know it sucks, get over it. And by the way it's been in the low teens on the Unrated Usage List for the past few months...

A fair few things worthy of note. I (with the help of LR) have compiled the statistics of the top 20 Pokemon each month into a spreadsheet, so that I can track the movements of the metagame more accurately. This allows us to plot usage graphs for every single Pokemon that has ever been in the top 20, and will allow me to track the movements of everything on one graph. If there is a large call for this I can megauploaded it so that people can view it them selves (just PM me). Bascially I can simply track the percentages over the months, and it returns some intersting results this month:

Breloom has entered the top 20 for the first time ever since Doug started collecting these Statistics!

Scizor usage finally peaked in percentage last month, seeing a 1.5% fall. At it's peak it was only 2% away from Garchomps usage before it got banned

Last months Top 5 (Scizor, Salamence, Heatran, Metagross, Gyarados) all dropped in usage

Zapdos' huge fall from grace continues, it was very popular at the beginning of Platinum, but has been falling ever since October

Latias usage continues to drop (it has 2 months in a row) and Infernape usage continues to rise

I also did a similar thing with the usage of leads, and again, there are some interesting results to be found:

Despite going up in general usage, Infernape's usage as a lead actually dropped. It seems people are seeing the potential of Physical and Mixed Infernape again.

Jirachi use skyrocketed in December, and stayed level in the next to months. It took another large leap this month.

Swampert usage continues to rise at a very fast rate

Hippowdon usage rose again. This is a very interesting one, Hippowdon usage had more than doubled in the two months following Obi posting his Stall team, it has been dropping since, but rose again this month. Perhaps stall is becoming more popular again with the rise of +Speed Natured Pokemon.

Obviously there are lots of other fascinating little nuances in the metagame, but I simply cannot put them all down here!